Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Local Projects Completed at End of the Quarter

I teach Managing Technical Teams this quarter, and it is one of my favorite courses to teach. Probably the most compelling reason for me is the guiding project of the classroom experience. After almost immediately forming in the first week of the quarter, four to six person teams need to choose a project that they will be working on over the next eight to nine weeks. The requirement of the project is that it must provide a "contribution to the community utilizing technology".

This means that outreach is done through from the Institute of Technology students to organizations and non-profits throughout the Puget Sound area.

The teams finished launching their projects via class presentations on Tuesday. Six total teams giving one hour presentations each.



Just some of the projects included:

  • Database design and development for the Breast Cancer Research Center.
  • Development work on training web forms for the Law Enforcement Support Agency.
  • Automated installation and set up programming for the Domestic Abuse Women's Network.
  • Online training programs for Goodwill of Silverdale.
  • Web development work for some very small local companies without the resources to do so otherwise.
I wish this class were taught twice a year, Fall and Spring, just to see the contributions continue to make their impact.

Additional student work in directed reading, research and internship will be on display this Friday starting at 9:30am in the Cherry Parkes building as part of the end of the quarter colloquium.

Second Book of Short Stories Out on Amazon

During the last year I wrote four short read collections called the Three Twisted Tales . Today they are available in aggregate as The Clock...